Sceptres, Charge general managers roll the dice in early-season PWHL trade

By Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press on December 31, 2024.

The general managers of the Toronto Sceptres and Ottawa Charge say they got what they needed in a blockbuster trade early in the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s second season.

Toronto sent alternate captain Jocelyne Larocque and forward Victoria Bach to Ottawa to get defender Savannah Harmon and forward Hayley Scamurra. The deal involving foundational players on each team was announced Monday night.

“We don’t get Savannah Harmon or Hayley Scamurra for free,” Sceptres GM Gina Kingsbury said during a media conference call Tuesday.

The four players were confirmed to play for their new teams, and against their former teammates, immediately in Tuesday’s clash at Toronto’s Coca-Cola Coliseum.

Larocque was Toronto’s first ever draft pick at second overall, and Harmon was Ottawa’s at fifth, in the PWHL’s inaugural draft in 2023.

Ottawa took Scamurra 29th overall and Toronto made Bach a seventh-round pick in the same draft.

Larocque and Harmon signed the maximum three-year contracts. Scamurra, who scored the Charge’s first franchise goal, and Bach were under two-year deals.

“Trades are difficult things, particularly when there’s a human component, particularly when it’s day one athletes who were there from the very beginning,” Charge GM Mike Hirshfeld said.

The PWHL’s second season opened Nov. 30. Toronto and Ottawa carried identical records of two wins, an overtime loss and three losses into Tuesday’s game.

The four players are veterans of their respective national teams – Larocque and Bach for Canada and Harmon and Scamurra for the United States. Kingsbury is also Canada’s general manager.

“This is the ugly part of professional sports,” Kingsbury said. “I have a long history with both of these athletes with Toronto, but also with the national team.

“You have to be able to sacrifice something to make your lineup better and at times it hurts and it stings, and in this case it does.”

Larocque, a three-time Olympian with 11 world championship appearances, is a shutdown defender who the Sceptres paired with Renata Fast.

But Toronto wanted a power-play upgrade after going 3-for-13 to start the season.

The 29-year-old Harmon brings puck-moving ability on the back end and potential chemistry with Fast, Kingsbury said. The two women were former college teammates at Clarkson.

“The power-play piece was important to us,” Kingsbury said.

The Charge wanted 36-year-old Larocque for her tenacity in the defensive zone, but also for her leadership qualities to mentor young defenders Ashton Bell and Stephanie Markowski, Hirshfeld said.

“Every game in this league is a one-goal game,” he said. “We just felt like having someone like Jocelyne, the experience she brings, the world championship rings, the Olympic medals, in third periods in tight games, that’s going to help us get over the finish line.”

He felt Bach’s offensive creativity and skating ability overshadowed by Toronto’s depth up front last season will get a chance to shine with Ottawa.

Kingsbury likes the size, strength and versatility of the five-foot-eight, 160-pound Scamurra.

“She’s highly, highly competitive,” Kingsbury said. “She plays well off the puck, on the puck. She can play up and down the lineup.”

The PWHL’s first season that started a year ago on Jan. 1, 2024, was light on trades as players and management were preoccupied with getting a league up and running.

Ottawa was involved in the two trade-deadline transactions March 18, however.

“I want to be known as the GM who wins championships,” Hirshfeld said. “Whatever approach we have to do to accomplish that objective, that’s what we’re going to do.”

With PWHL expansion likely in 2025-26, Kingsbury says general managers must operate with that in mind.

“You want as much of a deep team as possible going into what potentially is an expansion draft where you will lose players,” she said.

The PWHL’s collective bargaining agreement states a traded player must report to her new team within 48 hours of an in-season transaction, and 72 hours in the off-season.

Players are allowed upon arrival two consecutive days off to organize their lives. The four told of the change in their hockey futures Monday were swapping jerseys for Tuesday’s game.

“We’ve maybe over-the-top communicated with our athletes for the last two seasons on the fact that this will happen, trades will happen, good players are going to leave our market, good players are going to come into our market,” Kingsbury said.

“There will be player movement,”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 31, 2024.